Paper receipts are used by most merchants at their point-of-sale (POS) or checkout to confirm the purchase of goods or services and are later used by consumers to perform returns, exchanges, rebates, and claims. However, the thermal paper requirements for providing paper receipts pose serious environmental threats, including deforestation and high levels of water utilization. Furthermore, in today's digital environment, having to physically store a paper receipt is both inconvenient and inefficient for both the consumer and retailer. To reduce the use of paper receipts while still maintaining the ability to provide consumers with confirmation for the purchase of goods or services, electronic receipt systems have been introduced to the market.
In one such electronic receipt system, when a consumer arrives at a POS terminal to purchase a good or service, the consumer may request an electronic receipt or a paper receipt. If an electronic receipt is selected, the electronic receipt system validates the consumer's identity. To this end, the consumer and/or a salesperson performs a particular action at the POS terminal, such as swiping a magnetic card (e.g., credit card, debit card, member card), scanning a barcode, or manually entering a specific series of predefined characters (e.g., telephone number, e-mail address). Once the consumer's identity is validated, an electronic receipt is generated for storage and/or processing in association with the consumer's account, for instance, in an online database.
In another electronic receipt system, near field communication (NFC) can be used to transfer an electronic receipt between an NFC communications device at the POS and an NFC-enabled mobile phone. Alternatively, a camera on a consumer's mobile phone is used to capture a photograph of a digital receipt. In both of these cases, the electronic receipt is then stored in a memory on the mobile phone.
NFC is a standards-based short-range wireless connectivity technology that allows for simple, fast, and secure data transfer between electronic devices. NFC is based upon existing international standards recognized by the ISO/IEC (International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission), ETSI (European Telecommunication Standards Institute), and ECMA (European association for standardizing information and communication systems). NFC is compatible with contactless infrastructure that is already in place in diverse locations throughout the world. With the advent of NFC-integrated mobile devices such as mobile phones, it is possible to entirely eliminate the need for an individual to carry a magnetic card or scannable barcode card, or to remember and manually input a series of characters, for a variety of retail and other situations. Instead, an NFC-enabled mobile device can function as a contactless card in conjunction with a contactless card reader for identifying an individual at a POS.